Leading children's advocates sought to galvanize voters Wednesday about health, education and youth-services initiatives ahead of the upcoming elections and next year's legislative session.
Officials with the Kids Count Coalition, a group of individuals and organizations led by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, issued a collective call to action during a news conference held at the state Capitol in Little Rock.
Speakers asked both residents and policymakers to support efforts aimed at helping lift children from poverty and diverting them from the juvenile justice system.
"We are talking about truly putting kids first," said Patty Barker, campaign director for No Kid Hungry, a group that focuses on ending child hunger nationwide. "State leaders, local leaders need to address these well-known but little discussed rankings. ... We must act now."
Barker's words echoed in the marble-walled rotunda as she recited the bleak figures: More than one in four Arkansas children, nearly 184,000, live in poverty; one in five families don't know where their next meal is coming from. These statistics, and similar numbers, are included in the latest annual Kids Count report.
Arkansas continued to languish at the bottom of the country for child well-being, landing 44th for the second year in a row in the report. In 2014, Arkansas ranked No. 41. The report, released in June, is compiled by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation, and examines factors such as childhood poverty, juvenile deaths, literacy and teen birth rates.
Wednesday's news conference was intended to "raise awareness on the big picture" rather than highlight specific policy changes affecting children, explained Richard Huddleston, executive director of Arkansas Advocates.
But the organization has organized its mission, he said, in support of an earned-income state tax credit that he believes strengthens lower-income families and by giving priority to juvenile justice, child health, pre-kindergarten education and after-school and summer programs.
Along with Huddleston and Barker, leaders from the state Public Defender Commission, Children's Advocacy Centers of Arkansas, Arkansas Out of School Network and the Arkansas Early Childhood Association urged a shift in legislative focus and voter advocacy.
Their message came just weeks after Republican delegates stripped support of pre-K from the party platform because some members were concerned that increasing access to the program would later result in additional educational mandates and costs.
Because of its status as 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit, Arkansas Advocates is prohibited from endorsing candidates or political parties.
However, the organization published a 2016 "Voter's Guide," available on its website since May, detailing relevant information about the issues it promotes.
"We can talk about the issues," Huddleston said after the news conference. "That isn't new for us. We want to have those conversations."
Huddleston recently blasted state policymakers for only "paying lip service that they are 'for kids.'"
In a June guest column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he argued that legislative decisions drained state revenue and failed to make "critical investments in our youngest children, especially the most vulnerable," citing the 2013 and 2015 tax cuts that slashed $242 million from the annual budget.
Inferior funding or lack of "public investment" was a common theme among most speakers at the conference.
Laveta Wills-Hale, the Arkansas Out of School Network coordinator, expressed dismay with insufficient support for high-quality after-school and summer youth programs, even though such programs were signed into law five years ago through the Positive Youth Development Grant.
"We have a fundamental question in the state about readiness," Wills-Hale said. "Have we done enough to ensure that our children are doing well, that they are ready to meet the challenges of life? ... I submit to you that there is much more work that is yet undone."
Metro on 10/06/2016